In many situations, wireless cellular communication may get hindered due to reasons such as natural or man-made obstructions, network congestion, and so on. For example, due to poor penetration of radio signals inside concrete buildings, users present in the building may not be able to communicate, with the help of wireless cellular communication networks. However this is not desirable, especially during the time of emergencies. For example, when a fire rescue operation is ongoing in a building, wireless communication between the first responders is of utmost importance to save lives. In another example, at the edge of a cell, the received signal strengths can be much lower than for the users within the cell. Hence the user may be unable to make calls or avail other services.
Relay functionality was introduced in 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Long Term Evolution (LTE) specification as part of LTE-Advanced (LTE-A), Release 10 standards, however the 3GPP relay node is a dedicated relay node, which is required to support the eNodeB functionality as well as a subset of UE functionality. The eNodeB functionality in the relay node is needed in order to support the connecting UEs and the UE functionality is required to connect the relay node to an eNodeB thus making it (relay node) a fairly complex node in terms of functionality.